Engineering Commons^™

The Impact Of Vision Zero Initiatives On Road User Safety In New York City, Alex C. Phares, Md Amdad Hossen, Kakan Dey

Mountaineer Undergraduate Research Review

Despite modern vehicles, improved transportation infrastructure, and advanced traffic signals, more than 36,000 Americans die from traffic crashes every year1. With the goal of reducing traffic fatalities to zero, New York City (NYC) adopted Vision Zero (VZ) initiatives in 2014 and has deployed 23 categories of countermeasures, ranging from road improvements to training and community outreach programs2. In this research, trend analysis and hypothesis tests were done on NYC traffic fatality data for three main categories of roadway users: motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians, to evaluate the success of the VZ initiatives. It was found that annual fatalities of both motorist …

Evaluating Factors Influencing Transportation-Related Energy Consumption, Amrit Williams

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This thesis contributes to the literature assessing the relationships between travel patterns, transportation-related energy consumption, and urban form. Although the literature has explored several area-related and other factors, the focus has mainly been on urban areas. This research aims to (1) quantify the relationship of transportation-related energy consumption with urban form, (2) explore how individual attitudes might affect consumption, and (3) explore differences in consumption among different socioeconomic and demographic population groups.

Data collected from an online survey targeting adults in the contiguous U.S. supplemented with secondary spatial data were used to address the research goals. The collected sample was …

Identification Of Crash Contributing Factors In Av Involved Crashes, Md Tanvir Ashraf

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) can dramatically reduce the number of traffic crashes and associated fatalities by eliminating the avoidable human-errors related crash contributing factors. Many companies have been conducting pilot tests on public roads in several states in the United States and other countries to accelerate AV mass deployment. AV pilot operations on California public roads saw 251 AV-involved crashes (as of February 2020). These AV-involved crashes provide a unique opportunity to investigate AV crash risks in a mixed traffic environment. This study collected the AV crash reports from the California Department of Motor Vehicles and applied the Decision Tree (DT), …

Calibration Of Iri-Based Psi Equation Using Updated Quarter-Car Parameters, Shirin Bahaaeldin Hassan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The international roughness index (IRI) was established in the 1980s and later used in generating the present serviceability index (PSI), which was developed to predict present serviceability rating (PSR). PSR is a measure of ride quality ratings made by a panel of highway users. The ratings range from 0 to 5, where “0” for very poor and “5” for very good. Various studies had formulated the relationship between IRI and PSI for different types of pavements, such as flexible, rigid, and composite pavements. The current IRI-based PSI equation being used among many state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) was proposed by …